Rumbo al Norte – Day 9

First important thing to say: Bilbao is both larger and smaller than we thought.

I know, it sounds difficult to understand. But somehow I was expecting a little town and found a city. Once we found a city, however, we also discovered that the center is tiny and perfectly manageable in one day.

Or, in our case, a few hours!

We started the night before, parking in front of a large, historical building turned modern on the inside.

There was the giantest screen (photos came out horribly wrong!), a library, a chill out area… It looked like a good spot to go to if you live in Bilbao.

Which, by the way, in basque is Bilbo. Ha.

During the evening and morning that we were there, we quickly realised that the basque people are extremely friendly and not at all abrupt and curt as I thought they would be (don’t ask me why, that was just a prejudice I had).

The next day we started off by wandering in the old town. Which is teeeeeny tiny!

Walking along the river (which crosses the city) and checking out all the different bridges they have is a good way to sightsee, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for that.

A man riding a peacock.

The Old Town, also know as the “7 Streets”, is honestly really small and, if your time is limited, requires two hours maximum. There are parkings all over the city and finding a spot even outside public parking areas isn’t difficult at all.

I loved the above mural. Something between psychedelic and fantasy, it was a work of art.

Here’s another one that I had to take two photos of and then patch together – there was a bridge between the two figures!

We saw this tiger statue the first evening driving back to the hotel, and only just managed to grab a photo of it the morning after from a bridge while driving. It was built with the building it sits on in 1940. Done very well, in my opinion.